Amortentia
by prcstntt
Summary: Mother always used to say: 'Curiosity is a vice'.


Mother had told him again and again: 'Curiosity is a vice!'

He knew it and understood it completely, but he just couldn't help himself. When he was eight years old he wanted to know what was locked in the dungeon, when he was ten he was desperate to hear what it was that Lucius and Narcissa were whispering about in the library. At fourteen he became interested in Pansy's breasts, whom he didn't even like and thought to be repugnant.

Draco Malfoy is sixteen now and Draco wants to know how does Amortentia smell to him.

After the class finishes he waits until Slughorn retires to the storeroom and quickly makes his way to the table where the potion, so enticing, pearly and deadly, stood.

Inhaling the spiraling fume for the first time he smells bitter chocolate. Nothing special. Second try - chocolate gets replaced with the cold wind that hits you across the face when you fly on your broom as fast as you can. Draco's disappointed. Malfoys hate trivial things.

The third component of his Amortetia is blood. Draco's in daze. He inhales more and more and more. Chocolate, wind, blood. He practically dips himself in the cauldron to make sure that blood isn't a mistake. Thick, deep, metallic aroma with a sort of sweetness to it overrules everything else, but he just can't tear himself out of the potion.

'Be careful, young man, or do you want to fall in love with me?', he hears Slughorn's husky, old voice.

Draco gets his head up abruptly.

'Why aren't you heading to dinner, young man?'

'I - I just wanted to know what - the smell of Amortentia - what was it like for me...' Draco mumbles. He's worried that Slughorn would think that he's here to steal the damned potion.

But professor just gives him a big, warm smile.

'And what does it smell like?'

'It smells like blood, sir. Is it even possible?'

'Anything is possible in this world, my boy, ' Professor answers, nodding.

Draco is going to turn eighteen in one month and he sees how an ugly giant about twenty feet tall grabs Granger with his monstrous hand and drags her through the window. Granger's wails are heart-rending: 'Mummy, mummy, mummy!' He swings her, almost with care, for half a minute, then tosses her back into the castle, right on the wrecked fragments of the wall.

Mudblood doesn's stand a chance.

Giant roars and his moronic laughter sends an echo throughout a destroyed fourth floor. When he's done laughing he just leaves.

Gobsmacked, Draco's looking out of the corner, nobody but him have witnessed this absurd death.

Where are her worthless goofy friends? Where are they fucking about?

Finally, he masters the courage and carefully approaches Granger. She's lying on her back. Eyes, wide open, on the ceiling, right leg is unnaturally crooked, pool of blood has already formed around her.

A pool of filthy blood.

'What were you doing here all alone?' Draco whispers, feeling his temples pulsing with pain from all the smoke and dust. He coughs, still recovering from the Room of Requirement.

Malfoy doesn't feel even a flicker of any emotion, he is not even disgusted or annoyed. He just notices in the back of his head the noises of the battle that's happening somewhere behind him. It's now somewhere near the Astronomy Tower.

'Why where you alone?!' He roars, suddenly in despair with the numbing silence. He knows that the dead don't talk back, but he can't not ask.

Broken wand lays in ten feet from the body of its mistress.

Draco sits down by the corpse, dreaming of being somewhere far far away from there. Even Azkaban would suffice. He lingers on her tangled, covered in blood hair, pale, thin, bluish face and limply spread arms. She looks like a doll.

Muddy blood - muddy death.

'I'm very sorry, Granger,' he sincerely said. 'You were a witch, still. You deserved an Avada.'

Quickly, not giving himself time to change his mind he leans to Hermione, to close her eyes forever, as the old tradition demands.

He leans in and freezes. Painfully familiar smell hits him straight in the nostrils. Slytherin is terrified. He shakes his head in hope that he imagined things. He didn't.

Draco Malfoy's Amortentia smells of Hermione Granger's dirty blood.

Original work is here: /readfic/1952179


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